Harrigan

by Max Brand

  CHAPTER 37

  And as Harrigan and McTee, followed by Kate and Campbell, ran out tothe open air, they saw the crowd of the mutineers surge across thewaist toward Sloan with upturned faces, wondering, and ready forterror. Hovey broke through their midst.

  "Hovey!" shouted McTee. "Look at the mist over the sides! Draw abreath; smell of it! It is fire! Henshaw has set fire in the hold!"

  It was plain to every brain in the instant. To every man came thethought of the complaints of the firemen concerning the heat in thehold of the _Heron_; the noxious odor like musty straw; the warmth, thedeadly warmth of the decks. A volcano smoldered beneath them, and themist was the sign of the coming outbreak of flames. And the mutineersstood mute, gaping at one another, looking for some hope, some comfort,and finding the same question repeated in every eye. McTee climbed downthe ladder to the waist, followed by the rest of the fugitives. Tenminutes before they would have been torn to pieces by the wolf pack.Now no man had a thought for anything save his own death.

  "Hovey," ordered McTee in his voice of thunder, "tell these fellowsthey must obey my voice from now on."

  They roared, snatching at this ghost of a hope: "We will! We'll followBlack McTee! Hovey has brought us to hell!"

  In a moment everyone was in frantic motion. Campbell started for theengine room to see what had caused the stopping of the ship. McTeehimself, followed by Harrigan and the stokers, went down to thefireroom. It was fiery hot there, indeed. When the Scotchman swung downthe ladder into the hole, it was like a blast from a furnace, and theair was foul with the nauseating odor of the smoldering wheat. The mengasped and struggled for breath, and yet they began to work withoutcomplaint.

  All hands set to. The fires were shaken down and started afresh; thecoal shoveled out from the bunkers. Then a fireman collapsed without acry of warning. They carried him out to the upper air, and brought downtwo of the sailors to take his place. And the sailors went without amurmur. They were fighting for the one chance in ten thousand, thechance of bringing the ship to shore before the fire burst out in flamewhich would lick the _Heron_ from one end to the other within an hour.

  McTee went up to the bridge to take the bearings and lay the course. Bythe time his reckonings were completed, steam was up; Campbell hadremedied the trouble in the engine room; the propeller began to turn,and a yell went up from the ship and tingled to heaven. When McTee camedown from the bridge to the waist, leaving Hovey at the wheel, a dozenof the tars gathered about the new skipper, weeping and shouting, forin their eyes he was the deliverer, it was he who was giving them thefighting chance to live.

  And how they fought! There was something awe-inspiring and almostbeyond the human in the fury with which they labored. It was in thefireroom that their chief difficulty lay. The fireroom of a largesteamer is a veritable furnace, and when to this heat was added thatfrom the hold of the ship, it was truly a miracle that any living thingcould exist there.

  But Harrigan was in charge. When men wilted and pitched to their faceson the sooty, dusty floor, he trussed them under one arm and bore themup to the air. Then he went back and drove them on again. Before theend of that day, however, with the coast still a full thirty-hour runahead of them, it became literally impossible to continue longer in thefireroom. But Harrigan would not leave. He had a hose introduced intothe hold. The men worked absolutely naked with a stream of waterplaying on them. Now and again when one of them collapsed, Harrigansnatched the fire bar or the shovel from the hands of the worker andlabored furiously until another substitute was found.

  The necessity of his presence was amply demonstrated that night. TheIrishman was too exhausted to continue another minute, and the menhelped him to the deck and sluiced buckets of salt water over hisgreat, trembling body. To keep the men at work, Campbell went down inthe hole.

  They had to carry him up in half an hour. Then McTee tried his hand. Hestood the heat as well as Harrigan, but he could not inspire suchdaredevil enthusiasm in the men. They missed the raucous, cheery voiceof Harrigan; they missed the inspiring sight of that flame-red hair;and they missed above all his peculiar driving force. In other words,when Harrigan came among them, they felt _hope_, and when a man hashope, he will work on in the face of death.

  And at last McTee came up and begged Harrigan to go back. He went, andfound an empty fireroom and dying fires. He ran back to the deck, andat his shout the dead veritably rose to life. Men staggered to theirfeet to follow him below. Every man on the ship took his turn. Hoveycame down and passed coal; McTee came down and wielded the fire bar,doing the labor of three men while he could endure.

  And the _Heron_ drove on toward the shore. The morning passed; theafternoon wore away. It was a matter of hours now before the shorewould be in sight, and McTee spread this news among the crew. He sentlittle Kamasura and Shida, the cabin boys, running here and theresaying to every man they passed: "Four hours! Four hours! Four hours!"And then: "Three hours! Three hours! Three hours!"

  And the crew swallowed whisky neat and returned to the fireroom.

  At sunset, dim as a shadow, a thing to be guessed at rather than known,the man on the bridge sighted land. The word spread like lightning. Thestaggering workers in the fireroom heard and joined the cheer whichHarrigan started. Then the catastrophe came.

  A torch of red fire licked up the stern of the ship; the flames hadeaten their way out to the open air!

  It was the quick action of McTee which kept the panic from spreading tothe hold of the ship at once and bringing up every one of the workersfrom the fireroom. He gathered the sailors on deck who had strengthenough left to walk, and they made a line and attacked the flames withbuckets of water. There was, of course, no possibility of quelling thefire at its source, for by this time the hold of the ship where thewheat was stowed must have been one glowing mass of smoldering matter.Yet they were able, for a time, to keep the course of the fire fromspreading over the decks of the ship.

  With this work fairly started, McTee ran back to the forward cabin andupper deck of the _Heron_ and set several men to tear down some of theframework, sufficient at least to build enough rafts to maintain thecrew in the water. So the three sections of the work went on--thefirefighting, the lifesaving, and the driving of the ship. McTee ondeck managed two ends of it; Harrigan in the fireroom handled the mostdesperate responsibility. It seemed as if these two men by their nakedwill power were lifting the lives of the crew away from the touch ofdeath and hurling the ship toward the shore.

  And now for an hour, for two hours, that ghastly labor continued. Theentire stern of the _Heron_ was a sheet of flames when the last workersstaggered up from the fireroom, their skin seared and blistered by theterrific heat. Last of all came Harrigan, raving and cursing andimploring the men to return to their work. As he staggered up the deck,reeling and sobbing hoarsely, Kate Malone ran to him. She pointed outacross the waters ahead of the ship. There rose the black shadow of theshore and under it a thin line of white--the breakers!

  Now by McTee's direction the rafts were hoisted and dragged over theside of the ship, while one frail line of men remained to struggleagainst the encroaching flames.

  They were licking into the waist of the _Heron_, and the wireless housewas a mass of red; White Henshaw was burning at sea, and the prophecywas fulfilled.

  The last of the rafts were hoisted overboard and half a dozen mentumbled into each. When the rest of the crew were overboard, McTee,Kate, and Harrigan, lingering behind by mutual consent, took one raftto themselves. All about them tossed the other rafts, and not one manof all the crowd had thought of the golden treasure which they wereabandoning with the _Heron_. Each might be carrying a few gold pieces,but the wealth of White Henshaw would go back into the sea from whichit came.

  They had not abandoned the flaming ship too soon. A fresh breeze wassweeping from the ocean onto the shore, and red tongues licked aboutthe main cabin and darted like reaching hands into the heart of thesky. By these flashes they could make out the struggling rafts wherethe sa
ilors cheered and yelled in the triumph of their escape. ButMcTee set about erecting a jury sail.

  He wrenched off two strips of board from their raft and across these heand Harrigan affixed their shirts. The same wind which had lashed thefires forward on the _Heron_ now hurried the fugitives toward theshore. They had a serious purpose in outstripping the rest of therafts, because when the mutineers reached the shore, the mood ofgratitude which they held for Harrigan and McTee was sure to change,for these two men could submit enough evidence to hang them in anycountry in the world.

  Looking back, the _Heron_ was a belching volcano, which suddenly liftedin the center with the sound of a dozen siege guns in volleyed unison,and a column of fire vaulted high into the heavens. Before they reachedthe tossing heart of the breakers, the _Heron_ was dwindling andsliding, fragment by fragment into the sea.

  Through those breakers the last light from the ship helped them, andthe wind tugging at their little jury sail aided to drive them on untilthey could swing off the raft and walk toward the beach, carrying Katebetween them. On the safe, dry sands they turned, and as they lookedback, the Heron slid forward into the ocean and quenched her fires witha hiss that was like a far-heard whisper of the sea.